


Sphinx

by zulu



Category: House M.D.
Genre: 06-12, Drabble Sequence, Gen, house/wilson fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-28
Updated: 2006-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 01:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zulu/pseuds/zulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solving a Sphinx's riddle turns him to stone; it's better to leave him with questions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sphinx

**Author's Note:**

> 1000 words: 4x250.

Outside House's hospital room, three heads bend over his chart. He watches them; he doesn't have the strength to turn his head. He's in brachycardia, his heart rate depressed by the morphine, his pulse hovering around fifty. He watches them, because right now they're the only thing he can attach a thought to. Every systolic beat pushes his pain higher. Every diastole is a momentary break in the siege.

Stacy's exhausted, her shoulders set and tense and sharp. Her hands shake when she brushes impatiently at her eyes. The doctor, Cuddy, crosses her arms and leans back, shaking her head at something Stacy says. Wilson presses his lips together, and he takes two jerking, pointless steps away before turning back, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

House counts out seconds by the stutter-blip of his heartbeat on his monitors. The call button rests in his palm, and he runs his thumb over the switch. Ringing the nurses to distraction doesn't help. They check his IV and tell him the morphine is already set too high. House wore down their sympathy on the first day and now they're brisk and impatient, walking out on his insults. So he watches, vision blurred by slow leaking tears.

Wilson says something, gesturing, and Cuddy agrees. Stacy covers her face with her hand. Wilson grips her shoulder tightly, leaning in to plead, and Stacy finally nods. They've made a decision. About him.

House hurts too much to really care what it is.

 

***

 

He blinks, and when he's aware again Stacy's taking his hand, twining their fingers together. She smoothes the sheets and slides down into the bedside chair that she's barely left for three days. Her head falls, and she lays her cheek against his chest, listening to his heart. House raises his free hand just enough to stroke her shoulder.

"What were you plotting?" he asks finally, his voice rasping. His throat's torn and raw from screaming, and he barely feels it. In the entire universe there's only his leg, and Stacy's arm tensing under his hand.

"James has an idea," she whispers. "A middle way."

House wants to laugh. "Wilson injects his patients with poison to cure them," he says. "Oncologists love extreme measures."

"This is different," Stacy says. "This is you."

"Tell him to come in here and tell me that."

"James says debridement could leave you with some use of your leg--"

House doesn't even bother spitting out the word "some" like a curse. He lets his eyes close, too tired to fight, lost in the pain.

"Greg, this could work."

Stacy's eyes are swollen from crying. She looks bruised from lack of sleep. House wants to make everything better for her.

He wants his leg more. "No," he says, and he is _breaking_. "No, I can't, I--"

"This isn't just about you!" she bursts out.

"It's not about Wilson either."

"I meant me, you bastard," she whispers.

House turns his head away. "Tell him no."

 

***

 

When House wakes up, Wilson is standing one hesitant step inside the doorway. House swallows against the sticky dryness in his mouth that he recognizes as the fade of a general anaesthetic.

"Where the hell were you?" he says, dully. It's not really a question.

Wilson leans against the glass wall and tips his head back. House can't remember a time when he couldn't read Wilson's face like a kid's picture book. He says, "Give me my chart."

Wilson hesitates, and he looks lost and hurt, like he's only just learned that the world can be unfair. It's easy to outwait him; House has nowhere to go. Wilson leaves the wall, takes House's chart from the foot of his bed, and hands it to him.

House reads the surgeon's notes on the myectomy. His mind is empty. He feels muffled and nauseous. The pain is gone but it will come back, as the nerve endings awaken one by one.

"House, I'm sorry." Wilson's eyes are dark and earnest and full of pity. House hates him.

"Stacy had power of attorney," he says. The consent is right there in the chart, countersigned by Dr. Cuddy.

"I...I could have talked her out of it."

"Shut up." House doesn't want to hear Wilson's excuses: _I didn't know how extensive the damage was, how much muscle they'd have to take_, or, worse, _I didn't want you to die_.

It's his last chance to be numb. House closes his eyes.

He doesn't say, "Get out."

 

***

 

House remembers the light.

He was watching through the glass walls of his hospital room. There were three heads bent over his chart, discussing him. He remembers his heart bursting against the walls of his chest; he remembers flying apart, away from the pain.

Every instant of the visions was perfect. The knee-deep grass in the farmer's field was crisp and green and filled with singing insects; the volleyball court echoed with the crowd's roar and the squeak of shoes on hardwood. House follows the memory of the bright tug against his mind. He remembers dying.

He thinks, _Where the hell was Wilson?_

House, who remembers everything, doesn't remember that.

Maybe at a conference, delivering a speech on antiangiogenesis; maybe on a romantic weekend with his wife, trying to save his marriage; maybe sitting back, watching the game, letting his phone ring and ring and ring--

Like the never-ending whine of the flatline.

Afterwards, Wilson prescribes for him eagerly. It could have been Cuddy, or some toothless old GP that House could bully and badger into giving him free reign. But Wilson wants to; and why not?

House was unconscious, so he doesn't know what happened. He was in so much pain he was delusional, so he doesn't know what happened.

When he woke up the pain was still there: less, manageable, but still there.

He remembers Stacy and Cuddy, bent over his chart, discussing him. He remembers he was betrayed.

He doesn't need to remember anything more than that.


End file.
